Photo sync issues after 10.8.2, iOS 6, iPhoto 9.4 upgrades

Same problem here. OSX, iOS on iPhone 5, iPhoto on MBA, all updated to the latest patches, yet the iTunes sync fails to bring over photos in right order. Rebuilt database and did a lot of things witout avail. This is a bug I didn't expereince before updating iPhoto, OSX and iOS with last pataches. I really hate the fact that spent all this money on expensive Apple devices only to expereince such poor quality.

I restored to 9.4.1 - the applications AND the full library - and the problems went away. When 9.4.3 comes out I will upgrade but again will make sure I can Time Machine back if I need to.

Sorry if this has been covered already however I have an issue with iPhoto. When my iPad or iPhone are synced to iTunes and you go to the photos tab in iTunes I noticed that there are several "dated" events that show up among my other events in iTunes. These "dated" events had been pictures that were deleted from my iPhoto. Does anybody know how to resolve this issue?

Hi Chris.Richardson01!

Yes, I have the same "feature" as you. iPhoto on my MacBook Pro displays one set of Events and pics. "Events Photos" on my iPad has, as you call them, dated pictures, that I have deleted long ago from my iPhoto library on my MBP. And, interestingly, "Events Photos" on my iPhone are different still!

BTW, when I say deleted, I mean DELETED! Deleted from Events in iPhoto and then deleted from the iPhoto Trash.

I have deleted my iPod Photo cache on my MacBook Pro (all 35GB of it!) and resynced all the photos on both the iPad and the iPhone (that took hours), but that did nothing to help the disparity among all these photo libraries.

I was hoping iTunes 11 would address this craziness.

Wrong.

My next great hope. iOS 6.1.

I'm such a Pollyanna.

Best regards, Mr. Luigi

Hi Chris.Richardson01!

Mr. Luigi back again.

I've been doing a little experimenting with our problem and have solved it. At least for me. I will outline what I did. Depending on how you set up the syncing of your pictures to your iDevices this may, or may not help. Also, Step 1 may not be necessary. But, since this process takes a while if you have a large photo library to download to your iDevice I over engineered the process.

Step 1. Delete your iPod Photo Cache. Don't worry about doing this. It will get rebuilt automatically.

If you are using a Mac:

Go to Finder --> Pictures --> Right click on iPhoto Library (I don't know why folks still use "right click" as most Mac users are not using a mouse. Instead I should say, "Use a Two finger click your track pad." --> Click on "Show Package Contents" --> Highlight "iPod Photo Cache" --> Under File choose "Move to Trash" --> Empty Trash (This will take minute or so as this Cache may be as big as 30+ GB) --> Done with Step 1

Step 2. Open iTunes on your Mac (or PC) and get your iDevice(s) of interest up and running in iTunes.

Step 3. Select one of your iDevices.

Step 4. Select "Photos" along the top.

Step 5. OK, this is where the excitement happened for me. Normally I choose the option "Sync Photos from iPhoto" and "All Photos, albums, Events, and Faces." My first idea was to turn off "Syncing of Photos from iPhoto." I thought that would wipe out ALL the photos from my iDevice...old, new, and imbetween. In fact, that is just what I was led to believe would happen as I received a pop up message as soon as I did that asking if I wanted to delete all the photos on my iDevice or keep the ones I had. I, of course, selected, DELETE ALL THE PHOTOS ON MY IDEVICE! I went ahead and synced and much to my surprise, all my photos were still on my iPad. It did not work. My attampt to clean out all the photos on my iPad so I could start out with a fresh and clean resync was thwarted. Crazy!

Then I thought...maybe I should forget the option "All photos, albums, Events, and Faces" when using "Sync Photos from iPhoto." Instead I chose, "Selected albums, Events, and Faces, and automatically include no Events." I also thought I should leave the box "Include Events" UNchecked.

So I did that. BUT, I left ALL the Boxes (For Albums, Events, and Faces) that appear when you select this option UNCHECKED! Then I synced. Sure enough. My ENTIRE Photos App on my iDevice was empty. Success! I had removed the old, mixed up, crazy photos collection that had been on my iPad.

Step 6. I then went down the list of Albums displayed once you choose "Selected albums, Events, and Faces, and automatically include no Events" and chose the Albums I did want included on my iPad. I am a strong advocate of having a very organized set of Albums so I had no need to check any of the Events. I also did NOT check any of the Faces boxes (more on that later!).

Step 7. I selected "Apply" and then "Sync" and waited the several hours for the 4000 plus pictures to be installed on my iPad. But once finished I had a PERFECT collection of picture Albums corresponding exactly to the picture Albums on iPhoto in my MacBook Pro. All those old, deleted pictures that I couldn't get rid of were GONE! I then applied this same procedure to my iPhone and iPod Touch. Result...3 identical Picture collections on my 3 iDevices that parallel my iPhoto collection on my MacBookPro! Hoo Raa!

One caveat: For some reason that baffles me, even though I did NOT select any Faces, Faces were transferred to my iDevices. This sounds like a bug to me, but I can live with it. In fact, after seeing Faces on my iDevices I decided it was not a bad idea, so I went back to iTunes and actually clicked all the boxes of all the people listed in Faces and resynced. That didn't actually make any difference in the number of pictures associated with each person on my iDevices. So, it appears Faces is, for all practical purposes, ON by default for syncing to your iDevices.

Well, I hope this may be of some help to you.

Best, Mr. Luigi

Hey Mr. Luigi

Thanks for the help, however I did everything step by step and still nothing. Whenever I connect my device to itunes, and click on the photos tab it still shows about 20+ dated events that do not exist in my iPhoto events. I got a little desperate and started digging around in the iPhoto "packaged contents" and started removing anything that corresponded with that date. After finally removing everything that I found, I restarted the computer and connected my device, click on the photos tab and all the events are STILL there.

While digging through iPhoto "packaged contents" I did find the pictures that corresponded to the events that showed up in itunes and not in my iPhoto and deleted them permanently. After doing so I went back to the photos tab on iTunes and clicked on the dated events and the pictures that were in the dated events, were no longer there, Just a bunch of empty dated event folders that do not exist in iPhoto ,a step in the right direction I thought. However after everything I have done I can not remove the "Empty Dated Folders" from the photos tab on iTunes.

Hi Chris.R

Well, that's a total bummer. :-(

Hm. Didn't they say, "It just works?"

Not!

Maybe, now that Scott Forestall is no longer running iOS things may start to turn around in many areas where OSX and iOS still don't play nice. iPhoto seems to have more than its share of problems in this arena. I say this from ample first hand experience.

Sorry my protocol didn't work for you. I suspect it may have something to do with the fact that you are working with iPhoto via Events and I am using Albums. I have no answer why that would be the case as an Album, for all practical purposes, is just a collection of links to the actual pictures in Events.

There is still hope that iOS 6.1 may offer you some relief if you don't find a solution on your own.

Best, Mr. L

@Chris.Richardson01

I got a little desperate and started digging around in the iPhoto "packaged contents" and started removing anything that corresponded with that date.

You must NEVER use the finder to make any changes of any sort to the content or structure of the iPhoto library - there are no user servicable parts in it and any changes made other than using iPhoto may corrupt yoru library and cause data loss

However after everything I have done I can not remove the "Empty Dated Folders" from the photos tab on iTunes.

This is because you have destroyed your iPhoto library - you need to load your backup from before you corrupted it by makeing deletions using the finder

LN

Ok I know I was foolish deleting files. How would I load my backup from time machine?

Thanks for help

Hi Chris.R,

Yep...messing around with the iPhoto package contents is always "exciting." Everything is actually not off limits. As I said in my earlier post, deleting the "iPod Photo Cache" will not get you in trouble. But, that is a major exception. For all practical purposes, LarryHN is right...not that he needed my approval!

I don't know how close you live to an Apple Store, but considering your situation and my own personal experience it is not unreasonable to consider bringing your computer and backup harddrive (where you store your time machine backups) to the Genius Bar. This is not because it is so difficult to replace your corrupted library with an older non-currupted one. But, considering that you are still also having this problem with your events it may be time to get the Genius Bar on the case.

They can replace your corrupted library and ALSO get after this problem you're having with the events. Having said that, there are levels of expertise of Genius employees. I hope you get one as capable as the person I worked with when I had problems with my iPhoto library about 7 months ago. He TOTALLY fixed my problem...and I mean I was having some major problems.

Just an idea.

Mr. L

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1427

Essentially you launch TM, go back through its "finder like" interface to the point you want, select the iPhoto library (by default in the pictures folder) and click restore

LN

Mr Luigi,

I will try your fix.

Only problem I see is when I select certain albums,

The number of photos in those albums on iTunes is less than in iPhoto

and thats how they download,

Thanks for your help,

JRC

Hi JRCorv,

I hope my protocol works for you. The different numbers of photos in your albums on the Photo App on your iDevice and the corresponding album on iPhoto is an interesting "feature." I would tend to chalk it up to the qwirky, inexplicable personality of iPhoto, but it may have a more reasonable answer. I have noticed that when the number of photos in corresponding albums differs it is because a photo is missing some of its metadata in iPhoto. I don't know if the data got corrupted somehow during one of my iphoto upgrades or what, but that seems to bother iTunes and it won't sync that photo onto my iDevice. I'd be interested to see if the decrepacy you are seeing is from the same source. The loss of metadata can be quite miniscule. For example, in one case, all that is missing is the size of the photo. There is a "--" where it should say "878kB." Doesn't seem like a big deal, but that is the only thing different between this photo in an album and all the other photos in that album and this is the ONLY photo that will NOT sync to my iPhone.

Anyway, I thought I'd pass this on. It may not help you get your iPhoto and iDevice albums perfectly matched, but at least you will know why. (Unless you can repair that photo/metadata and then resync!)

Mr. Luigi

Thanks Mr Luigi,

Your prcedure did work. I was able to delete all and reload what itunes would bring in.

Still short a few numbers of photos, but better.

Will try the metadata thing.

Joe

Can I just add my two cents and say that while this issue is truly frustrating, I have found a CONCRETE solution that truly did work. Download "Bulk Rename Utility" and install it. Don't use any of the options at the bottom of the program interface UNLESS you still need to rename your filenames to reflect a date, such as 13-01-06 (2013-January-6th is what that means). Only go into "Options" and then "Timestamp". Then just select the middle option for all 3 selections. That option is "Fixed". So you would select "Fixed" for Date Created, Date Modified, & Date Accessed. I set this option up and hit OK. Then I navigated to the folders where my pictures were located, and I hit CTRL-A to select all of them. When I did this, all of the entries under the Created, Modified & Accessed Columns lit up green. I then hit "Rename" in the bottom of his program and voila! Hey presto, it worked like a charm. Nothing actually got renamed; it was just the EXIF attributes that got changed, and now they all have the same date (today) for created, accessed & modified. That really doesn't matter much to me since all of my photos were numbered by a preceding date format, i.e., "13-01-06 Mom & Dad" (the numbers representing 2013-January-6th) or "12-10-27 Party at Wendy's" (the numbers representing 2012-December-27th)....if you number them this way, with date formats preceding all of your filenames, it's a great way to not only keep descriptive filenames attached to your photos but always have them numbered chronologically, and this way they'll always increase in number as the year(s) progress. I GUARANTEE THIS WILL WORK! It's dumb, extremely dumb, that Apple hasn't programed an option into the default camera app by now to allow for different sorting options, but this is a workaround that really truly does work. Once you're done with Bulk Rename Utility, I would recommend deleting your iPod Photo Cache folder on your computer, then desyncing your photos and then resyncing them to your phone. They will then be in chronological date order, I guarantee it.